The Sun Is Setting
by AshleyKay
Summary: Arnold sees Helga at a pier, it's sun set and they're both a little lost. Arnold/Helga. But not really.


**The Sun Is Setting**

_**I own nothing. Obviously. **_

**A/N**: _This is a revised version of something I wrote for a drabble thing. In which I asked for a ship and one interest of my interest list and one random item. The ship of course was Helga/Arnold. A walk on the pier. And an iPod. _

_This is my first longer fic for this show. And uhh…yeah. In response to the thing about Arnold's parents. Maybe it's me but I'd have huge abandonment issues regarding the whole parents left, thought to be dead, find out that they are possible still alive and haven't been home in like twelve years. And no it probably wouldn't be logical, but when are we? _

Arnold figured her iPod was full of angry music. Lyrics that screamed, he imagined something dark and red and her.

He finds her at a pier, pink book open to her right and the sun setting in front of her.

It's blue and pink and wild.

She looks as if she's on fire.

"Football head." She doesn't bother turning toward him.

He sinks to her left.

He can hear the tinkly music of something.

"What's that?"

"Chopin."

"Really?"

She arches her eyebrow at him.

"It's just...classical? Is that you?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes, it's Aerosmith, and others it's The Weepies. Milk and Honey. It's just, sometimes. Never always." She smiles and the sun is low and purple. "I'm complicated."

"Always."

"Always." She turns back to the sky and fingers her book.

"What are you always writing?"

"Why are you always saving?"

"Aren't I suppose to?"

She shrugs.

"What Helga. What? I'm suppose to be hard and angry and mean and bitter? Never help?"

"Like me?" He doesn't see the front of her smile but the side is twisted cruelly.

"Maybe?" It's more breath than question.

"I do good when I want. But I want to do it for the right reasons." Her eyes turned right and he couldn't hear her but saw the air going in and out.

"And I don't?" The neighborhood and the kids and her. He held tight to the good he's done, for them, and isn't that right?

She turns to him, then, her face dark against the sun, her blue eyes black and low, like she knows. Like she always has.

"They won't come back you know. They won't. No matter how nice you are or good or kind. No matter how much you do. It won't bring them here. Only they can do that."

"Fuck you." He's half off the pier when he turns back. Her face fully shadowed behind the sun. The brightness of her hair is blinding. And she always has known, even when he wasn't sure or didn't have words.

He breathes.

_inout_

_inoutin_

_ininout_

Helga has the words.

He holds his breath and takes his time going back.

"I'm not sorry, Arnold. I'm not. Because it's true. Just like my parents don't see me more for my meanness or my anger. Just like putting on a red wig won't make me Lila or playing a piano won't make me Olga. It just is."

"My parents aren't yours."

"No. No yours just left and never came back. My just stay here and forget."

She turns back to the last of the daylight.

"They love me." They do. They want to come back. They're lost.

_we can't wait to come back to arnold._

"My parents love me too." But she bites her lips and flips through the book.

"Why?"

"I don't know why. I don't think I'd love me either." She rips a page from the book and tosses it in the water and the ink bleeds it white.

"No. Why don't they want us?"

Instead she pushes the book at him.

"What do I know, I'm thirteen and angsty. I'm a bully and a menace. You're the golden boy and your parents probably have spent all their lives looking for a way to get back."

He doesn't tell her how he thinks they should know the way back. That if they're alive and well they've simply forgotten.

_we can't wait to get back…  
_  
"I'd love you, Helga." She doesn't move for the longest time. Still as if she were stone and solid. The curve of her childhood still lingering over her gawky face.

It's the twilight and she's all shadows.

He'd love her more than anything.

"I really would." And he means it. Not because it's the good thing or the kind thing. But maybe if he could….

She laughs and turns left off the pier, it's the long way home.

He looks at the last page, slanted words and love as crumpled as old war letters.

_dream of me  
in color and grey  
break me and keep me_

_through anger  
over shadows  
still me and open me_

_wide despite  
the smallness  
of me and in me_

_find the truth  
of love that keeps  
the sun from setting_

_helga g. pataki_

The sky is blue and dark and he doesn't think of what the world looks like where his parents are.

He takes the short way home.


End file.
